Upcoming Events

Reading the Story of the Queen of Sheba in the Qur’an from a Gender-sensitive Perspective

The story of the Queen of Sheba has proved interesting to study from an interreligious framework, especially when comparing Jewish and Muslim perspectives. Gender also proffers a valuable lens: several studies have focused on negative portrayals of the Queen of Sheba’s hairy legs or demonic nature (Rees 2022; Stinchcomb 2022). What has not been attempted is an Islamic-theological analysis that seeks a gender-sensitive reading of the Qur’anic story compared to its possible intertexts. Therefore, this talk will focus on the Qur’anic story of the Queen of Sheba and particularly on how the Qur’an plays with gender roles, identifying three germane themes of the early Islamic version of this story.

This seminar will be a kind of mini-conference on "Co-Producing Heresy," as a follow-up to our conference on this topic in September 2024. It will include two papers on this topic. First, Sita Steckel (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main) will speak on "Enemies within: Re-using inter-religious and anti-heretical polemic in the mendicant-secular controversy." Next, Ahmad Khan (American University in Cairo) will provide an answer to the question: "How did medieval Muslims think and write about heresy?"

Each presentation will be 45 minutes (30 min talk + 15 min discussion).

Organized by Caroline Bridel and Maureen Attali

Historical and anthropological studies often point out what they consider to be ritual similarities between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The study of both literary and material data suggests that many of those rituals originated from or developed upon practices performed by all inhabitants of the Roman and/or Sassanian empires. This workshop proposes to investigate the formation processes and early development and contexts of so-called Abrahamic rituals through the notion of religious co-production.

Click this link for the Call for Papers. Proposals are due by July 15, 2024.

Organized by Mercedes García-Arenal, Katharina Heyden, David Nirenberg, and Davide Scotto

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are often understood as an ensemble of three (‘Abrahamic,’ ‘monotheistic,’ scriptural, or prophetic) religious communities and traditions. But often when adherents of two of these “sibling” religions interact, the third is treated as a figure to be marginalized, stigmatized, or instrumentally exploited vis-à-vis the others. This conference proposes to explore this dynamic of the excluded third.

Click this link for the Call for Papers. Proposals are due by June 1, 2024.